A Sea of Sorts

“The entire world we apprehend through our senses is no more than a tiny fragment in the vastness of Nature.”

— Max Planck —

I’m sure you’ve been there: You sit or stand somewhere in a wide, open space in nature, your eyes kind of set on the distant horizon but unfocused, and your mind trailing off until it is completely blank…

Growing up by the sea, I could happily spend hours just looking out at the water, random thoughts coming and going. The seemingly boundless space and the gentle movement of the waves and clouds had a calming, almost soothing effect that, for reasons I did not care to understand, made the big problems of childhood or adolescent life seem much less overwhelming.

If you’ve experienced this daydreaming, loosely associative state of mind, and I’m sure you have at some point in your life, you will know what I’m talking about. And I find it is much easier to achieve in vast landscapes that lack demanding focal points.

Which brings me, in a roundabout way, to the Altiplano Boliviano. If you were after a place that is more or less the epitome of “vastness,” this high plateau in the Bolivian Andes would be a strong contender. What I find genuinely intriguing is that this immense, otherworldly emptiness, sitting, in parts, at over 4,000 metres elevation, was, in a manner of speaking, once a marine environment, hoisted skyward by tectonic uplift over the course of a few million unhurried years. A former “sea,” now stranded at an altitude that makes you closely watch your oxygen levels…

The images in this gallery are from two separate late autumn trips, two years apart. We were blessed with some slowly moving clouds that helped capture both movement and a bit of drama. And a rare treat arrived in the form of an unexpected snowstorm, which handed me the two winter frames in this series.

In a way, these images are an attempt to convey that sense of openness, of standing very small in a very large place. I don’t know, of course, if they manage to pass any of it on to you, but if you catch even a hint of that soothing, soft-focus calm I first felt as a kid staring out at the sea, then they’ve done their job…